Dan Kelly’s first ad features two ethically challenged sheriffs

Conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Dan Kelly featured two Wisconsin sheriffs with highly unethical track records in his first political ad before the election on April 4.

The ad opens with three sheriffs standing outside, one of them being recently re-elected Waukesha County Sheriff Eric Severson. Severson came under scrutiny in 2021 when he hired Joseph Mensah, a former Wauwatosa police officer who resigned because he shot and killed three people during his tenure. Mensah was 25 years old at the time of the first shooting —which took place on July 16, 2015 —and he fired his weapon at a man named Antonio Gonzales eight times. The other shootings occurred in 2016 and 2020.

Despite Mensah’s dangerous track record, and him being the only Wauwatosa police officer involved in more than one shooting over the last ten years, Severson hired him anyway. Only after massive public criticism, a week of protests and an independent investigation did Severson agree to remove Mensah from his force, but not after giving him 13 months of pay.

Another one of the sheriffs endorsing Kelly in the ad was Dodge County Sheriff Dale Schmidt. In 2018, Schmidt wrote a column where he blamed the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. school shooting — where 17 people were killed — on “participation trophies.”

Kelly placed a to air the ad featuring the two sheriffs. The results of April 4’s election will determine the ideological swing of Wisconsin’s Supreme Court. Kelly’s opponent Janet Protasiewicz has spent close to $10 million to defeat Kelly.